Reddit Is Taking Down Its Creeps

Reddit's creeps are losing their Internet war, with the site banning the subreddit r/CreepSquad, which was already a replacement for the recently blocked r/CreepShots, both places for men to upload photos of unsuspecting women. Site admin David Croach has also banned user the moderator of those subreddits, POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS for being too creepy, as Croach explains in a thread on Subbreddit Drama:

There are actually a lot of rules that we (the admins) recently found out when we investigated his (PIMA’s) account that he had broken. The most recent one was creating a subreddit that disregarded the rules of reddit regarding sexualizing teens/minors, and not being active in moderating posts that broke that rule. He’s had multiple offenses in that category.

This all happened after Reddit retaliated against Jezebel's Katie J.M. Baker, posting a photo of her to CreepSquad that made it to the front page of the subreddit, as BetaBeat's Jessica Roy explains in her detailing of the saga. Baker had written a post about Predditors, a Tumblr, which is now password protected, that sought to expose the identities people posting pictures of often scantily clad women without their consent. Redditors say that site led to the assault of one of its members (they also like the idea of keeping their anonymity), hence the backlash.

Two evenings ago, this war escalated when a group of Reddit moderators banned Gawker media because Adrian Chen maybe threatened to expose revered user Violentacrez, who also happened to start the subreddit r/jailbait. These two things are certainly related, as this is about keeping certain content on Reddit without having real people's identities linked to the users posting this content. It's no surprise then, that the anti-Gawker media push was also led in part by POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS, who wrote a tribute to his fallen comrade, where he also mentions the CreepShots drama. Following both events, his advice for Redditors is one and the same: "PLEASE BE CAREFUL WHEN POSTING PERSONAL DETAILS ABOUT YOURSELF ON REDDIT."

Though Gawker is now banned from 68 subreddits, per the r/BanGawker subreddit, we'd say the creeps are losing this war. Baker didn't seem to mind having her picture up for all Redditors to see. "Flattered that moderators of r/Creepsquad respect me enough to put a photo of me on the main page of their subreddit!" she tweeted. So far, in fact, both Chen and Baker got what they wanted. Violentzcrez is no more, and CreepSquad was taken down after one day on the Internet. It doesn't sound like Gawker writers are losing sleep over their lost page views, for which they still get bonuses, either, with Jezebel's Eric Gloria Ryan tweeting the following:

@max_read Staffers here are really worried about what losing the 100 or so clicks per week we get from Reddit will do to our bottom line.

This has also shown the mainstream world the dirtier side of Reddit, with the story making its way to places like The Guardian,Politico, and Slate. In fact, this attention may have had something to do with the banning of CreepShots and CreepSquad, while other unsavory threads, like r/picsofdeadkids remains. These underbellies exist just fine until the world discovers them, and then with enough pressure, they don't. The jailbait section, for example, didn't get taken down until Anderson Cooper brought the site to the world's attention on CNN. Only then, did Reddit "reluctantly ban child porn," to use the words of Chen.